Casting on for Christmas

At the turn of the year I made some knitting-related New Year resolutions (for the full list click here). One of these was to make a Christmas jumper. For several years running, as the Festive Season arrives, I’ve thought about how great it would be to have a really nice hand-knitted Christmas Jumper and promptly forgotten about it until the following year, when it’s far too late to do anything about it. With this in mind chose a pattern and ordered yarn a while ago. With social activities and trips out curtailed in the current lockdown, what better time to get started?

I found the Frosty’s Christmas pattern for a snowman jumper on the Drops Design website – one of thousands of the free patterns on the site, which also includes tutorials, hints and tips, an online shop and list of stockists.

It also has a yarn converter – all the Drops yarns are divided into groups: every pattern will recommend a yarn and provide alternative yarns – all yarns from that group can be used, sometimes using a double strand – the converter works out the weight/number of balls needed in your chosen yarn. That’s what I did. I fancied treating myself to something more luxurious than the 100% wool Drops Eskimo recommended but found that I could also knit this design using two strands of Drops Brushed Alpaca Silk (a 77% alpaca, 23% silk blend) so I bought that. This means that I’m also sticking to my “green” resolution to try and buy natural fibre yarns whenever possible.

The sweater is knitted in from the top down in stocking stitch, with raglan sleeves, constructed with separate front and back, rather than knitted in the round. It uses nice chunky needles (7mm) so it should take shape quite quickly. The details on the snowman’s face and the snowflakes are added afterwards. You have the option of knitting the snowman on the back too – you just don’t add the nose, scarf etc so you get the back view of him!

Now I’ve cast on the back and got started I’m really enjoying this. I did spend some time before I got to the snowman design rewinding the black and white yarns – the pattern only uses one ball of each and it is to be used double-stranded. The yarn is feather-light and super soft. I like the way it’s knitting up.

I’m really looking forward to wearing this at Christmas….and let’s face it we all need something to look forward to right now!